Design Objective

The opposite of a good product principle is itself a good product principle.

Everything else just is a truism.

Designing for Cognitive Differences Often people think of accessibility as “design for blind people”, but what about users with cognitive differences like inattention, anxiety, and depression?

If most users are making mistakes on a form, users with inattention will struggle even more. When this happens, figure out exactly where the errors are occurring, and fix the design of the form to target that error. For instance, if you’re receiving the wrong data for a field, it’s a sign that form labels are unclear; if you have inline-only labels, adding regular labels outside of the fields will do more than adding an explanatory note.

Anchor as much as possible to existing knowledge among your customers.

Say what your product or feature does or is.

Try to use the name.

Sans Forgetica A font designed to help you remember your study notes, by being more difficult to read than most typefaces. The 'desirable difficulty' you experience prompts your brain to engage in deeper processing (or so they claim).

Tools of the Trade

Suggested Changes Github's Suggested Changes is just the feature I didn't know I needed, and now can't live without!

I'm intrigued by how often I see the wrong choice of data structure in code.

Data structure choice is considered by many to be less of a priority than it once was, but in the last few weeks the usual suspects have popped up in different contexts, and the choice was significant.

Architectural

To keep the pace constant, we need the process to be sustainable, of course, but the product needs to be sustainable as well. That second part of the sustainability is often neglected. That is where all that work wanted by the delivery team comes in, even if it’s not necessarily wanted or understood by the stakeholders. Brady, the cleaning supplies company, sells warning labels that perfectly explain this problem: “If You Don’t Schedule Time for Maintenance, Your Equipment Will Schedule It for You”.

I think historically we've approached software design too much as an attempt to impose structure. Interesting problems are usually interconnected, so our goal should be to manage interconnectedness instead of squeezing it into the illusion of structure.

Devoops

a technician was working on an F-16 when he accidentally activated the six-barrels 20mm Vulcan M61A-1 cannon of that F-16. The cannon was loaded and some bullets hit another F-16AM (FA-128). That aircraft had just been refuelled and was – together with another F-16 – being prepared for a (training) mission. Due to the bullets, the F-16AM exploded and damaged the other F-16.

Peopleware

Next time you are stuck on a project you don't want to start, try doing something that you know will be satisfying. You just might have a bright idea while you're rinsing off your dishes, and that will make you excited to run over to your computer and get to work.

Locked Doors

I opened my Linux Chromebook and found my (grounded) daughter was logged in. I guess props for bypassing my "hardened" profile. But it made no sense. Screen-lock-on-close was enabled and guest logins were blocked, and… /1

The weirdest part of being the 1st finance person @ a startup is going back & forth between doing high value strategic stuff (e.g. hiring, raising money, etc.) and then tediously paying some random $70 invoice

Mauly Fright
me: "I think I'll work from home today so I can be productive and relax!"
foster kitten: 😂